Principal, Engineering Software Developer

Purpose of Job

The Principal, Engineering Software Developer is responsible for the support, maintenance and development services for all applications, systems and services that their team supports for the Bank.  The Principal, Engineering Software Developer manages a team of technical and functional specialists, liaising with other IT experts, users and managers in the Bank to address operational challenges, respond to evolving business needs and ensuring that strategic goals are met.  

The Principal, Engineering Software Developer will manage one of the core development, support and maintenance teams sitting within the IT Applications and Integration function.  The Principal, Engineering Software Developer is a critical role within the function and is responsible for ensuring common development and support standards, practices and processes are adhered to and are continuously improved.  The role requires extensive expertise of Agile working practices and processes as part of the role will be to transition the working practices from Waterfall to Agile.  The Principal, Engineering Software Developer will be required to evangelise Agile principles and will strive for delivering value early by building quality working software iterative and incrementally.

The role requires:

•    Management of up to six staff in the team.
•    Responsible for the support, development and maintenance of the Bank’s systems, which are operationally critical.
•    Works with staff at all levels across the bank to understand their issues, requirements, priorities and delivers on these priorities to increase and return value to the key Bank stakeholders.
•    Manages and has oversight of Third party software providers, IT contractors and consultants.
•    Manages and prioritises the issue log of 80-100 issues

Accountabilities & Responsibilities

•    Recruits, motivates, trains and develops staff within agreed policies and practices to maintain an effective workplace capable of meeting its objectives.
•    Ensures systems are resilient, fit for purpose and meets evolving business requirements.  
•    Manages and administrates the development programme to ensure that functional system changes/fixes, enhancements and developments are sound, support the Bank’s operational priorities and are conducted according to the Bank’s and Application and Integration team’s procedures.
•    Works with the business to proactively identify and manage their backlog of queries, defects, issues, enhancements, upgrades and projects.
•    Manages the business backlog and guides them on prioritisation, estimating and team capacity to deliver.
•    Works with external stakeholders (consultancy firms, software vendors, service providers, etc.) to ensure that functional deliverables are progressed optimally, timely and to the level of quality expected by the Bank. 
•    When appropriate, on-boards and motivates third parties within agreed policies and practices to maintain an effective and efficient workplace capable of meeting its objectives.
•    Is responsible for ensuring key agile working practices are adopted and adhered to, such as –

• Arranges daily stand-up meetings, facilitate meetings, schedule meetings, demo and decision-making processes in order to ensure quick inspection and proper use of adaptation process
• Managing the Agile process with the coordination of team
• Facilitating daily stand-ups, planning, demo and retrospective meetings.
• Knowledge of agile methodology and frameworks like Scrum, Kanban, XP, etc. 
• Forecasting how long work will take based on Lean Agile metrics
• Expert in estimation and planning and knows how to create useful, reliable and practical plans for software development projects.

•    Assists the Associate Director, to define the strategic direction of the function in order to drive forward change and to best support the Bank’s mission and strategic objectives.
•    Advises Project Steering Committees and run User groups ensuring stakeholders and sponsors are kept up to date.
•    Directly accountable for the engagement and effective overall management of staff including recruitment, compensation (as agreed with the Head of Department, if applicable), performance management, coaching and development. 
•    Champion and role model the Bank’s Behavioural Competencies and Corporate Behaviours, ensuring adherence within the team(s) so that the highest standards of integrity and ethical conduct are exhibited at all times.
•    Ensure that the ongoing internal controls are completed satisfactorily and evidence retained.  All audit points will be remediated within agreed timescales. 
•    Deputises for the Associate Director, as required to ensure the smooth running of the team.

Knowledge, Skills, Experience & Qualifications

Education & Qualifications:
•    Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in the area of expertise.

Knowledge & Experience:
•    Knowledge of agile methodology and frameworks like Scrum, Kanban, XP, etc.
•    Understand the fundamentals of iterative and incremental development.
•    Strong knowledge of Agile methodologies, theory, rules and practices, like: Scrum, Kanban, Crystal, FDD, XP, etc. 
•    Solid experience knowledge of software development processes and procedures.
•    Experience of Agile techniques, such as, User Stories, Continuous Integration, ATDD, TDD, Continuous Testing, Pairing, Automated Testing, Agile Games. 
•    Ability to take and understand the commitment to deliver the product on time. 
•    Know about the value of metrics and incremental delivery.
•    Knowledge about tasks, backlog tracking, burndown metrics, velocity, user stories etc. 
•    Familiar with common development practices, Service oriented environments, and Agile practices.
•    Experience in successful application deliveries, system implementations / upgrades. 
•    Experience of delivering software in a formal regime using source control management and controlled gates with relevant artefacts to support design, quality and support.
•    Experience of working in a mid-sized corporate environment, successfully aligning solutions appropriately with wider roadmaps, architecture and other initiatives.
•    Experience as a collaborative leader.
•    Ability to hold team members accountable via appropriate empowerment, set clear performance standards, resolve performance issues, keep team engaged and on task.
•    Demonstrable evidence of facilitation, situational awareness, conflict resolution, continual improvement, empowerment, and increasing transparency.
•    Evidence of building a trusting and safe environment where problems can be raised without fear of blame, retribution, or being judged, with an emphasis on continuous improvement and problem solving.
•    Experience managing teams and systems implementations across different technologies.
•    Experience working with financial services.

Skills:
•    Professional Expertise – ability to make effective and appropriate use of functional knowledge and technical skills 
•    Strong analytical and problem solving skills 
•    Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to communicate appropriate, concise and accurate information. 
•    Excellent interpersonal skills, in particular, service orientation and people empathy. 
•    Ability to influence internal and external stakeholders
•    Fluency in written and spoken English.
•    Ability to operate sensitively and effectively in a multicultural environment.

Monarch Ecosystem:
•    Extensive experience of working at agile at scale as lead development engineer across multiple teams to ensure software meets agreed engineering standards and quality metrics. 
•    Highly collaborative, working with EBRD IT architects to ensure we build it ‘right’, and make the ‘right’ choices in line with EBRD IT strategic direction and established technology decisions.
•    Leads a development Community of Practice collaborating, with other senior developers across EBRD IT to share good practice and adopt common standards.
•    Strong experience in Java coding and of developing micro services and integration using APIs, working with Spring Boot, Elastic (ELK Stack), RESTful web services, messaging services e.g. Enterprise Service Bus, MongoDB, Camunda BPMS engine.
•    Able to apply modern development methodologies e.g. BDD, TDD, in support of agile practices.
•    Experience of delivering, supporting and extending CI/CD environments and working with associated tooling, e.g. Jenkins, Maven, Gradle.

What is it like to work at the EBRD?

Our agile and innovative approach is what makes life at the EBRD a unique experience! You will be part of a pioneering and diverse international organisation, and use your talents to make a real difference to people's lives and help shape the future of the regions we invest in. 

The EBRD environment provides you with:

• Varied, stimulating and engaging work that gives you an opportunity to interact with a wide range of experts in the financial, political, public and private sectors across the regions we invest in;
• A working culture that embraces inclusion and celebrates diversity;
• An environment that places sustainability, equality and digital  transformation at the heart of what we do.

Diversity is one of the Bank’s core values which are at the heart of everything it does.  A diverse workforce with the right knowledge and skills enables connection with our clients, brings pioneering ideas, energy and innovation. The EBRD staff is characterised by its rich diversity of nationalities, cultures and opinions and we aim to sustain and build on this strength. As such, the EBRD seeks to ensure that everyone is treated with respect and given equal opportunities and works in an inclusive environment. The EBRD encourages all qualified candidates who are nationals of the EBRD member countries to apply regardless of their racial, ethnic, religious and cultural background, gender, sexual orientation or disabilities.  As an inclusive employer, we promote flexible working and expecting our employee to attend the office 50% of their working time.

Please note, that due to the high volume of applications received, we regret to inform you that we are unable to provide detailed feedback to candidates who have not been shortlisted (for further consideration).